Legacy: Fractured Era Legacy, Book 1

Three hundred years ago, Earth suffered a mass extinction event. The last humans fled to the stars in search of a new home. In the darkness, they fought to survive. Now the fleet decays, and their hope of finding a better world is fading. Era Corinth works to preserve the archives, but viewing them herself would be treason. When she's faced with the possibility that her unborn child may be aborted due to a genetic defect, her fascination with ancient secrets escalates to obsession.

Compendium: Artifacts of Lumin, Book One

On the heavily forested planet of Lumin, the Network has slept, dormant, for over 600 cycles. Only a select few remember that it resides beneath the crust of the planet, waiting, and for those who do, the battle for Lumin's future has raged in the shadows.

Serengeti

It was supposed to be an easy job: find the Dark Star Revolution Starships, destroy them, and go home. But a booby-trapped vessel decimates the Meridian Alliance fleet, leaving Serengeti - a Valkyrie class warship with a sentient AI brain - on her own, wrecked and abandoned in an empty expanse of space. On the edge of total failure, Serengeti thinks only of her crew. She herds the survivors into a lifeboat, intending to sling them into space. But the escape pod sticks in her belly, locking the cryogenically frozen crew inside.

Excelsior

The year is AD 2790. With space elevators and giant orbital fleets hovering over Earth, open war looks inevitable, and people are anxious to get away. The lines are drawn, with the Confederacy in the East and the First World Alliance in the West. In hopes of finding a refuge from the looming war, the Alliance is sending Captain Alexander de Leon to explore an Earth-type planet, code-named Wonderland, but at the last minute before launch, a Confederate fleet leaves orbit on a trajectory that threatens both the mission and Alliance sovereignty.

The Children of Darkness: The Seekers, Book 1

A thousand years ago the Darkness came - a terrible time of violence, fear, and social collapse when technology ran rampant. But the vicars of the Temple of Light brought peace, ushering in an era of blessed simplicity. For 10 centuries they have kept the madness at bay with "temple magic," and by eliminating forever the rush of progress that nearly caused the destruction of everything. Childhood friends Orah and Nathaniel have always lived in the tiny village of Little Pond, longing for more from life.

The Complete Exodus Trilogy: Books 1-3

When an object threatens human civilization, it becomes clear that we need to venture to the stars. With just a few years' warning, this will be a race against time, and only a small number of colonists can be saved. In an America turned authoritarian, a small group of people draws up their plans to change not this world but the next. The confrontation seems inevitable, but who will prevail and at what cost?

Forging Zero: The Legend of ZERO

The oldest of the children drafted from humanity's devastated planet, Joe is impressed into service by the alien Congressional Ground Force - and becomes the unwitting centerpiece in a millennia-long alien struggle for independence. Once his training begins, one of the elusive and prophetic Trith appears to give Joe a spine chilling prophecy that the universe has been anticipating for millions of years: Joe will be the one to finally shatter the vast alien government known as Congress. And the Trith cannot lie...but first Joe has to make it through bootcamp.

Exigency

Nine brilliant scientists travel light-years on a one-way trip to an Earthlike planet. Their mission is to study from orbit the two species of intelligent lifeforms on the surface. The first: an isolated people embarking on civilization and building their world's first city. The second: a brutal race of massive predators, spread thick and still growing across the dominant landmass - destined to breed and eat their way to extinction within a few centuries.

Brainrush, a Thriller: Book 1

When terminally ill combat pilot Jake Bronson emerges from an MRI with extraordinary cognitive powers, everyone wants a piece of his talent including Battista, one of the world s most dangerous terrorists. To save his love and her autistic child, Jake is thrust into a deadly chase that leads from the canals of Venice through Monte Carlo and finally to an ancient cavern in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, where Jake discovers that his newfound talents carry a hidden price that threatens the entire human race.

The Eden Plague: Plague Wars Series, Book 0

When special operations veteran DJ Markis finds armed invaders in his home and it all goes sideways, he turns to his brothers in arms to fight back. On the run from the shadowy Company, soon he finds himself in a war for possession of a genetic engineering secret that threatens the stability of the world. But who is behind it all - and are they even human?

Panglor: Star Rigger, Book 1

Wrongly discredited as a space pilot, Panglor Balef is doomed to die in space, if sheer luck doesn’t bring him through. But luck has never been in Panglor’s cards. Bad enough to be coerced into a mission of murder and suicide, he must also contend with Alo - a young woman, stowaway, and impossible companion. Neither of them, nor his empathic ou-ralot, could possibly anticipate the journey through space-time they are about to embark on, through a door to an insane reality from which there is almost certainly no return.

The Amber Project: The Variant Saga Volume 1

In 2157, a mysterious gas known as Variant spreads across the globe, killing or mutating most organic life. The surviving humans take refuge in an underground city, determined to return home. But after generations of failures and botched attempts, hope is beginning to dwindle. That is, until a young scientist makes a unique discovery, and everything changes. Suddenly, there's reason to hope again, and it rests within a group of genetically engineered children that are both human and Variant.

Sixth Cycle

Captain Jake Phillips wakes in his crash-landed craft and finds Earth transformed into a frightening new world. He faces two immediate threats that will test his survival skills to the limit. Mutated beings prowl the landscape, hunting humans and searching for the remaining resources. Without a plan in place, the battle will be lost, and humanity as Jake knows it will be destroyed. Sixth Cycle is a gritty post-apocalyptic story of survival and adventure.

Waking Up Dead

When Callie Taylor died, she expected to go to heaven - or maybe hell. Instead, when she was murdered in Dallas by some jerk with a knife and a bad-mommy complex, she went to Alabama. Now she's seen another murder, and she can't just let it go; she must find a way to make sure the police figure out who really killed Molly McClatchy before an innocent man goes to prison, all the while trying to determine how and why she woke up dead in Alabama.

Brightside

Welcome to Brightside. Make yourself comfortable...you won't be leaving. They call us Thought Thieves, but it's not like we have a choice. All the sick, twisted things rolling around in people's heads, we can't help but hear. That's why they rounded us up, stuck us in this little town. It's to make you feel safe. But they can't keep us here forever. It's day 100, and it's all gonna end. One way or another, I'm getting out of Brightside.

Neptune Crossing: Chaos Chronicles, Book 1

When John Bandicut sets out across the surface of Triton, he's hardly ready for the storm of chaos that's about to blow through his life. The alien Quarx that soon inhabits his mind is humanity's first contact with an alien life. The Quarx, part of an ancient galactic civilization that manipulates chaos theory to predict catastrophic events, seeks to prevent a cometary collision that could destroy the Earth. But it must have help. If Bandicut chooses to trust the Quarx, he must break all the rules - indeed, sacrifice his own life.

Future Shock

Elena Martinez has hidden her eidetic memory all her life - or so she thinks. When powerful tech giant, Aether Corporation, selects her for a top-secret project, she can't say no. All she has to do is participate in a trip to the future to bring back data, and she'll be set for life. Elena joins a team of four other teens with special skills, including Adam, a science prodigy with his own reason for being there.

Passage at Arms

Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war. Cook combines speculative technology with a canny and realistic portrait of men at war and the stresses they face in combat. Passage at Arms is one of the classic novels of military science fiction.

The Chronothon

Ben just wants time with the scientist's daughter who got him into this, but when he's rooked into competing in a chronothon - an Amazing Race through time - getting the girl means he'll need to make the finish line. When he finds out this competition is more than just a sprint through history, winning takes a back seat to surviving. To save the people he loves, he'll have to conquer the real dangers hidden in the shadows of the chronothon.

Incandescence

The long-awaited new audiobook from Greg Egan! Hugo Award-winning author Egan returns to the field with Incandescence, a new novel of hard SF. The Amalgam spans nearly the entire galaxy, and is composed of innumerable beings from a wild variety of races, some human or near it, some entirely other. The one place that they cannot go is the bulge, the bright, hot center of the galaxy. There dwell the Aloof, who for millions of years have deflected any and all attempts to communicate with or visit them.

Opening Moves: The Gam3, Book 1

The Earth is changing. The alien invasion brought social upheaval, advanced technology, and an armada of peacekeeping robots. But Alan, a college student pursuing a now-useless degree, cares little about all of this. He has only one thing on his mind: the Game. A fully immersive virtual reality, the Game appears to be a major part of the invading civilization. Alan can't wait to play, recklessly diving into the digital universe. Soon though, Alan realizes the Game is anything but simple, and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.

Ambassador 1: Seeing Red

24 October 2114: the day that shocked the world. Young diplomat Cory Wilson narrowly escapes death in the assassination of President Sirkonen. No one claims responsibility but there is no doubt that the attack is extraterrestrial. Cory was meant to start work as a representative to Gamra, the alien organization that governs the FTL transport network, but now his new job may well be scrapped in anger.

Voice of the Whirlwind

Steward is a clone, a beta. His memories are 15 years old, because his alpha never did have a brain-scan update. And in those 15 years, the entire world has changed. An alien race known as The Powers has established relations with humanity, and the Orbital Policorp that held his allegiance has collapsed.

Constitution

The year is 2650. Seventy-five years ago, an alien fleet attacked Earth. Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic.

Publisher's Summary

One of IndieReader's BEST BOOKS of 2014!

The entire Socket Greeny trilogy (Discovery, Training, and Legend) follows a white-haired teenager that discovers he's part of an evolved human race, how he trains to understand his true self, and the legendary conclusion of his true nature.

DISCOVERY

Work has always come first for Socket Greeny's mother, ever since his father died. But when she shows him the inner workings of the Paladin Nation, he discovers why.

Paladins traverse the planet through wormholes to keep the world safe, but from what, they won't say. Although his parents were not actually one of them, Socket is different. He soon finds himself in the center of controversy and betrayal when he's anointed the Paladin Nation's prodigy. He didn't ask for the "blessing" of psychic powers and the ability to timeslice, and he doesn't want to be responsible for the world. He just wants to go home and back to school and be normal again.

But, sometimes, life doesn't give us that privilege, his mother tells him.

And when the world is soon threatened and the Paladins are forced into the public eye, Socket discovers what his mother means. If he doesn't embrace his true nature, life as we know it will change forever.

TRAINING

A year has passed since the Paladin Nation was exposed to the public. Their mission is still to protect humanity from whatever may threaten them. Previously, it was the human duplications, but now that they've been extinguished their biggest challenge is dealing with the complications of public image. Socket Greeny, now 17 years old, has been a Paladin cadet for the past year and is nearing the final test. But that's the least of his problems. He's trying to live two lives: one as a superhero while hanging onto his normal life.

While fearlessly dealing with his masochistic trainer, he's trying to salvage his deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend back home.

This is a great trilogy at a great price. I really enjoyed the story. I very much recommend this trilogy. The only complaint I have is with the narration. Tony Bertauski has a good voice for narration, but there were a few little annoyances there. The sound level faded every now and then. Also, and this is very minor, but it did bug me that he pronounced the word "escape" as "Ex-scape". I guess that comes from having school teachers who scolded me for those types of things. The best narrators use different voices, accents, etc. and the listener forgets that it is just a single person narrating the story. While he does this on occasion with certain characters, he is not consistent. Still, as I said, he's got a good voice for narration so it wasn't a bad experience. The story was interesting enough to overcome these minor shortfalls in narration.

All in all, I thought the story was very good. I'll definitely be looking for other works by Tony Bertauski.

There are parts of this book where you just want the pain to end. I stuck with it just because I wanted to find out where it was going. But it was painful. I was literally yelling at the narrator telling him "Oh, just get on with it already!" The story is depressing and the narrator is monotonic. These three books should have been edited down to one, it would have been much better.

DeepExcellent adventure, and narration. You can follow our main character through his youth into growth and mind bending realization of his identity and power. Then neatly pulled together into a great ending, not leaving you hanging.